Carol Bove (born 1971 in Geneva, Switzerland) is an American artist based in New York City. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Born in 1971 in Geneva to American parents, Bove (pronounced bo-VAY) was raised in Berkeley, California, moved to New York in the 1990s, and graduated from New York University in 2000.
She was a Happy and Bob Doran Artist in Residence at Yale University Art Gallery in 2010, where she pursued research on the history of architecture on the Yale campus, and the effect of changing tastes in painting conservation on the Gallery's collection.
Using a wide range of materials, including books, driftwood, peacock feathers, seashells, metal, concrete, foam, and loans from other artists, Bove’s work includes drawings and installations which concern the social, political, and artistic movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Ink drawings of nude women taken from Playboy magazines from this time period, or inspired by a vintage Newsweek picture of Twiggy, or sculptures made up of bookshelves with books from the same time are examples of Bove's work.
In her exhibitions, Boves sometimes includes the work of other artists. For a 2007 show at Maccarone, she used work by artist Bruce Conner, Berkeley book dealer Philip Smith, and painter Wilfred Lang.
"Setting for A. Pomodoro" is a multi-part installation designed as a setting for a sculpture by the Italian Modernist Arnaldo Pomodoro, and every exhibition has included a different Pomodoro sculpture. She was partly inspired by a monumental sculpture by Pomodoro near her hometown of Berkeley, California, that reportedly had inspired filmmaker George Lucas's design for the Death Star space station in Star Wars (1977). She also was inspired by looking down on the Museum of Modern Art's Philip Johnson-designed sculpture garden from the heights of a building, "seeing the sculptures gone toy-like with distance." "Setting" has numerous art-historical references. As Bove has said, "I'm interested in making room for other people in my work."